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\title{Software Carpentry Bootcamp Teaching Model}
\author{software-carpentry.org, info@software-carpentry.org}

\date{}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

The bootcamp teaching model implemented by Software Carpentry succeeds in 
providing time efficient introductions to essential programming languages and 
tools, without turning ``biochemists and mechanical engineers into computer 
scientists.''\cite{wilson_software_2006}


\section{Boot Camp Model}

Software Carpentry Bootcamps  are in-person, example-driven workshops. They
utilize a distributed curriculum development paradigm and emphasize a time
efficient, exercise driven curriculum. Bootcamps are typically between one and 
ten days in length, and are composed of many topical lessons which range from 
one to four hours each.

The curriculum development process benefits from its resemblance to open source
software development. Potential Software Carpentry lecturers contribute
curriculum material to the software carpentry resource website. With this
resource made available online, the potential lecturers are then able to lead
one or more lessons during a bootcamp. The Software Carpentry licence allows
(and encourages) a lecturer to teach curriculum that other lecturers creates.
Often, under this model, the resource material for a single topical lesson may
be the collective work of many contributors.
 
Furthermore, by making lecture videos, notes, and example exercises freely
available online, the bootcamps implement a type of open curriculum model that
is gaining worldwide acceptance. Notable examples of such open curricula
include the `Open Course Ware' compendium from MIT \cite{website:mit_2011} and
Salman Khan's viral `Khan Academy' lectures \cite{website:khan_2011}.

The time intensive nature of scientific coursework limits the feasibility of
formal coursework in software skills for scientists. Unfortunately it also
constrains the reasonable length of a bootcamp seeking to ameliorate that lack
of formal training. A bootcamp-like intensity (thus the moniker) is in the
interest of student attendees as well as student course leaders. 

Feedback and experimentation with various teaching styles have led to the
observation that exercise driven lectures effectively condense skill oriented
material. That is, rather than teaching material as a lengthy soliloquy, a
single tool is described in brief and then immediately employed in a short,
hands-on-keyboards exercise. This requires that each student be seated at a
computer and ready to actively participate. This can be achieved by seating
students in a computer lab, where identical machines are available to each
student or by seating students in a lecture hall and instructing them to
install software dependencies on their personal laptops. In some Bootcamps,
taught by The Hacker Wtihin, a student group at the University of Wisconsin,
the use of cross platform Ubuntu virtual machines streamlined the technical
challenges that software setup on personal laptops has the potential to
present \cite{huff_rapid_2011}\cite{thw_.hacker.within_2010}.



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